Collection: Li Lu - #16 'Who is Li Lu and What Got Him Started Investing In Stocks?'
[Transcript]
BRUCE GREENWALD 00:00
Our speaker tonight who is Li Lu, graduated from the business school, went immediately into the business of running a hedge fund, did it first through Julian Robertson with extraordinary success and since moved on to doing it for himself and his old professors with even I have to admit more extraordinary success. (Laughter)
But beyond that, I think what you want to pay attention to is how basically does he put all these elements together in his own inevitable style. And with that – by the way let me actually say one more thing, the speakers you're going to hear from have very different attitudes towards risk and very different degrees of optimism which are particularly (inaudible) and particular the way in which they do investment.
Li Lu's background is having survived as a leader of the gentleman's square protests and escape with his life, in some sense a) he's very optimistic and b) after living with that kind of risk, the only thing you have to do is to run a hedge fund. (Laughter)
I will keep that in mind as you listen to how he goes about dealing with this environment of being a professional investor and how to outperform all the rest of the world. Li Lu. (Applause)
LI LU 01:34
Well, what Bruce said about me must be true because my evidence is that my wife actually showed up to listen to me tonight. Now, I can guarantee that does not happen in our home. (Laughter)
And also i really felt terrific coming back to this class. I mean this class in many ways is what made my career. About 15 years ago, at the time I actually wasn't even a student at business school. I was accidentally brought into a lecture.
I think basically part of this class and the speaker has a funny name that really reminds me of some kind of buffet lunches. Anyways, in the middle of the speech listening to Warren [Buffett], that light bulb kind of just went off and I figured that I can do something in this business.
And of course at the time, I was pretty desperate. You know, recently escaped from China, I didn't know anybody, had a very little, you know, connection whatsoever and didn't have any money.
In fact, I was deep in debt and I was horribly worried about how do I ever make a living in this country. And I really didn't grow up with a capitalist culture either. So in the middle of his speech, I thought well, what he said about investing really just so different from my perception of a stock market.
And the more i thought about it, the more i thought, "oh well gee this is might be something that I can do."
(Source: https://youtu.be/y3c2PKupiu8)
[YAPSS Takeaway]
This reminds me of a quote from Bill Gates;
"If you are born poor, it's not your mistake. But if you die poor, it's your mistake."
